A howl to answer a snarling Wolf

[Owen Davidson <owend...>]

Friends:

OUCH!  My ears are ringing.  Surely no review, honestly written, deserves
the sort of vindictive, personal retribution posted to this list today.  And
does the aggrieved artist cry "Rape!" in one breath and then threaten to
have "my female back-up singers... kick your ass" in the next?  To say
nothing of the sinister closer, "The next artist you callously put down, as
you have Friedman, Strom and
myself may react not only with words."  Perhaps this is just playground
trash-talking, but it has dire overtones in the light of a growing tide of
intolerance and a will to mayhem that infects the world.  It is with the
utmost dismay that I see Jews hector and even stone each other over
religion;  now will we come to blows over music as well?

And can such a vicious attack fail to have a (desired?) chilling effect on
the colloquy this list was meant to foster?  For a fact, I had to steel
myself to write these words, lest I make myself the target of reprisal.
Look at me, I'm not even Jewish, what do I know about "Klez?"  Maybe not
much.  I do know this: my Celtic forebears were more than willing to march
off to bloody battle against their own kind over any imagined slight.  Some
such happened to my ancestors (Davidson, if you want to look it up).  I find
no satisfaction or glory in reveling in my people's warlike past, which is
why I prefer not to hear the pipes.  I find in klezmer, by way of contrast,
a music of spiritual uplift, of rejoicing before G-d and the world, a music
that bridges disparate cultures and in so doing somehow ennobles them.  This
is not something to fight over.  Celtic, shmeltic.

   

 
_________________________________________________________________________
        Owen Davidson, Amherst, Mass.
        The Wholesale Klezmer Band

        The Angel that presided o'er my birth
        Said Little creature formd of Joy and Mirth,
        Go love without the help of any King on Earth. 

                                Wm. Blake